


There Isn't Really An Upper Limit For This Game, So Two Can Definitely Play At It

by discountsatanism



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: TAZ: Dust, gandy was confirmed as a scam artist and i woke up two hours later with this on my screen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-04-13 12:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14112762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/discountsatanism/pseuds/discountsatanism
Summary: Gandy is only half sure she’s winning this poker game.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> warning: author has an incredibly basic understanding of both poker and tarot cards. author is pretty confident about dominoes, though.

Gandy is only half sure she’s winning this poker game.

The poker game doesn’t start out with a drinking contest, but, as all good games do, within a few hours one game splits into five and soon it’s a drinking contest with arm-wrestling involved somehow to determine any outliers from the game of poker which is now also strip poker which has so many outliers because some chump(Gandy, two hours ago) insisted that it was in the rulebook that if you’d been dealt a bad hand you could trade it for a straight flush _if_ and only if you could beat the dealer in a game of dominoes.

“Hey!” she yells. “Epstein! Quit buildin’ shit with my dominoes!”

Epstein looks up from where he’s carefully building a spiral out of her dominoes(the specific seedy casino she’s in didn’t have any, so out came Gandy’s specialty antique tin of dominoes she won at a fair using the classic ‘stealing them when nobody’s looking and bolting’ tactic to get around the usual fairground riggings), and huffs. “No’ until ‘m finished,” he says petulantly. “You can’ wait.”

“Weird girl, you still in this game?” the dealer calls from the table.

“Sure am!” Gandy yells back. “Epstein,” she whispers angrily. “C’mon! Time’s of the essence here!”

He ignores her and goes back to building his spiral. Gandy decides to take the law into her own hands and kicks the closest tile. Hard.

The whole thing topples over as Epstein shrieks and winces as the tile she kicked hits him in the face. “My thing!” he wails.

Gandy starts scooping her dominoes back into the tin. “Shut up,” she tells him.

The dealer grins when she comes up to the table, and she sees why about two seconds later.

“Already dealt, girlie,” he says. “An’ your chips ‘re forfeit. ’S in the rulebook.”

She squints at him. Is it worth it?

. . .Probably not. She’s got two light weapons and there are about six people in here she knows for a fact have both the means and motive to get her in hot water- and besides, a poker game where you have to start all the fun is hardly a poker game worth preserving.

“Fine by me,” she says, before cracking a mile-wide smile, snapping her fingers, and disappearing from the room with a flash.

The Black Mariah is well outside of town, so she has to sprint, but Gandy’s quick, and it’s not like she stole anything but the show.

She lights the lantern beside the driver’s seat and just like that, she’s off.

-

“I wish I could teleport across the Atlantic,” Gandy mutters. “Or the Pacific, even if it is aiming a little high.”

“I could grant that wish,” Uncle Oni says from her shelf.

She looks back at him from where she’s sitting with her feet propped up on her worktable, fiddling with an artifact. “Oh, no. Just a thought. I mean, it would be nice to see Constantinople again, but it’s fine.”

She tosses the artifact- a pen, enchanted to write messages only visible to the writer- up in the air, catching it in one hand and sighing.

“There’s too much wide open space here,” she says absentmindedly. “Europe doesn’t have nearly so much nothing.”

-

She usually keeps her head down around railroad towns, but, in her defense, a very pretty girl asked if she told fortunes.

“For a price,” she says mysteriously.

Of course Gandy Dancer has tarot cards. Gandy Dancer has mahjong tiles and a deck of playing cards and dominoes and materials for every game that she knows how to play, which is most of them.

Now comes the hard part.

“I don’t do readings in my caravan,” Gandy says when she sees the girl looking at the Black Mariah. “There’s a great deal of bad energy in there. Dark spirits. It’s much better to do them in a home; someplace private and stable.”

The girl grins. “You plannin’ to stay for dinner too?”

“If you’ll have me,” she replies.

The girl- Gandy has to stop calling her ‘the girl’, she’s Gandy’s age at least- lives in a modest one-room house. She motions for Gandy to sit down at her kitchen table.

She retrieves the deck of cards from her vest pocket and begins shuffling.

Her host sits across from her patiently.

“It’s not,” Gandy says distractedly, “good form to give out your real name to a wizard, but if you’d like me to call you something different I’m afraid you’ll have to tell it to me outright.”

“You can call me Dancer, then.”

Gandy keeps her poker face, but god damn if _that_ isn’t a power move. “Nice to meet you, Miss Dancer.”

She finishes shuffling.

Dancer cuts the deck without being told, and Gandy lays out the cards with the honest worry that they won’t be her deck when she turns them over.

They are, though, and she lays them out with confidence and mystery. Hopefully.

“Ten of swords, five of swords, knight of cups, seven of swords-“ Gandy looks up. “We. . .seem to have come into this with a similar mindset, Miss Dancer.”

Dancer shrugs. “Maybe so. Depends on what you were plannin’.”

“Oh, I’m a simple woman,” Gandy says. “I was just planning to see what you were about and then rob you when you weren’t looking.”

“I was fixin’ to invite you to dinner, steal your key to your caravan there, and find anythin’ with enough magic in it to sell.”

Gandy raises an eyebrow. “You were planning on robbing a wizard?”

“So long as I don’t open any cursed books or pick up anythin’ with a dark aura, it’s worked for me just fine. See, I’m not exactly non-magical myself,” Dancer says.

They stare at each other for a hot second before Gandy picks up her deck, shuffles it one last time, and places it neatly in her vest pocket. “So is that a nix on dinner, now?”

“Not necessarily.”

Gandy grins. “That’s good to know.”

-

She stays in that town for a little bit longer than normal. Four days, to be exact. In that time, she wins three games of blackjack, loses two more to Dancer, fails to learn Dancer’s real name, and leaves with a slip of paper containing an address.

“See ya sometime,” Gandy says.

Dancer nods. “The same to you. Just one thing before you go, then.”

“Yeah?”

She holds out her hand. “Necklace.”

Gandy sighs, taking the silver necklace out of her vest pocket. “It was nice to meet you, Miss Dancer.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dear friend you'd trust with your life and that scam artist you tried and failed to scam that one time are basically the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's me...i'm back......and also sorry about the sudden jump in rating but i spent like six hours researching stab wounds last night for a thing i ended up scrapping and wanted to justify the wasted time somehow

The real, quantifiable difference between a disagreement and a death match is who’s looking, and there’s nobody else in this bar but the bartender, who doesn’t seem especially like a pacifist.

Gandy, ideally, would not be in this situation; her preferred method is wide-eyed deceptive innocence, but there’s a reason she keeps two pistols on her and it’s not because she thinks they make her look cool. Not entirely, anyway.

She didn’t even bring anything beside her pince-nez, mostly because she heard this bar was run by the sort of person who’d pick up on that sort of thing- in essence, she’s a little bit fucked here.

Her marks, an pair of old vampire twins who’ve(allegedly) never lost a game of cards, already have their weapons out. Neither of them have guns, small blessings, but both of them have very-definitely-absolutely cursed knives and both of them at least know how to hold a dagger.

Gandy puts on her most innocent smile. “Did I do something to you gentlemen? Are we fighting? I hope we’re not fighting, I was really enjoying this game. Do we have to fight or can I come back to-“

“Ma’am, we’re onto you,” one of them says. “You put on a good act, but we know card-countin’ when we see it.”

She sighs. “If I’d known magic was allowed, I wouldn’t have chosen something so amateur. Really, though, I was planning to leave town tonight and if this fight gets messy it’d waste both of our time.”

“You plannin’ on givin’ us our money back, then?”

Shrug. “Girl’s got to make a living. Why else would I be desperate enough to hit up a casino where I thought I’d be relying on _card-counting_?”

The man, unsympathetic bastard, looks unimpressed. “You either hand me your money back, or I take it, ma’am. You decide.”

Gandy grimaces. “If you insist.”

_Fuck, they’re fast_ , she thinks, only just managing to get out of the way when the first strike comes. She locates the shelves she’d thought looked markedly sturdy a few minutes ago and pulls herself up fast enough that only her shoe gets cut.

Taking the meager time that affords her to get out her guns, Gandy jumps over to a table, not sure whether to thank her lucky stars or not when it just cracks threateningly instead of dumping her on her face.

There are still two people after her, though, and she only manages to get the chatty one in the shoulder before her left leg gets hit. She whirls around and gets _him_ in the chest, but knocks herself off-balance and gets a knife uncomfortably deep in her upper arm.

She yelps, firing her gun in the general direction of the knife. Whoever’s holding it goes down and takes their knife with them, which she counts as a win for the two seconds before she looks down and sees the _considerable amount of blood_ where her second-best flannel used to be.

“Well, shit,” she squeaks, unquenchable terror of death replacing adrenaline. “Shiiiiiiiit.”

She reminds herself to _think_ , _you can work with this_ , and stumbles to the bar.

“Hey, mister?” she asks.

The bartender looks up from his whiskey. “You here to apologize for ruinin’ my floor?”

“Sorry for ruining your floor,” she says, “Can I buy a bottle of the strongest liquor you have?” She grabs a handful of the money in her pocket and drops it on the counter. “Here.”

He looks up at her, then down at the money, before bending down and picking up an unmarked blue glass bottle he sets on the counter. “Home brew,” he says. “Drink all of it an’ you’ll go blind.”

“Thank you,” she says, sitting down on the floor and pulling her bandana out of her hair. She soaks it in the alcohol before tying it around her shoulder with a hiss. “Yikes,” she mutters, looking at the blue fabric turning purple with blood.

She looks at the destruction. One of her opponents, the one she got in the chest, is definitely dead, but the other just looks to be in an unholy amount of pain, and has a frankly concerning patch of blood above his belt.

Now pretty sure she isn’t going to die before she gets to the Black Mariah, Gandy’s feeling a bit generous. She picks up the bottle and sets it next to him. “Don’t draw a knife on someone with a gun,” she croaks.

He glares up at her.

“I didn’t start the fight,” she says, pulling herself up by one of the tables. “You tried to stab me first.”

-

There’s really only the hard way to learn that trying to stitch yourself up with one hand is a no go. Gandy makes do with honey and linen.

She looks at her finished work with disgust. “Yi- _ikes_.”

It looks a lot _less_ disgusting, though, and she sighs.

The wound hurts like hell, but the bandages cover up the really gross parts. She rests her chin on her uninjured arm and tries to remember what she knows about stab wounds.

Well, she’s got a strict no-scams-while-already-grievously-injured rule, so she’s got plenty of free time, and. . .

Gandy kind of wishes America weren’t a giant expanse of nothing at times, and one of them is whenever it would be really nice to have someone whose house she could crash at without any real questions.

She grabs a grubby notebook off of a nearby box and starts flipping through it for anyone less than two states away and-

God, she hopes that address wasn’t payback for trying to rob her.

-

Her arm is fucking killing her and she’s about one more surprise bout of stabbing pain away from just calling it a day, but she can see the town on the horizon and goddammit if you give someone like Gandy your address you can’t complain when this sort of thing happens.

Her caravan gets to the outskirts of the town and she drops down from the driver’s seat into a crouch, brushing the dust off herself with her good arm as she walks into town.

“You lookin’ for-“

“No,” she says, cutting off the stranger before he finishes his sentence.

He huffs. “Well, office is that way if you change your mind.”

-

Gandy knocks.

The door opens in surprisingly little time.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Dancer says.

“Hi,” Gandy replies. “Can I. . .come in, maybe?”

Stepping aside, Dancer nods to Gandy’s. . .everything. “You look like you’ve been havin’ a hell of a week.”

“Accurate.”

Once she’s sat down in the chair Dancer pulls out for her, Gandy sighs.

“You’ll be needin’ fresh bandages for your arm, I’m guessin’,” Dancer says offhandedly, opening some cabinets.

“How could you-“

She turns around, and Gandy cuts herself off.

Dancer rummages in a cupboard for a while before pulling out a painted wood box and dropping it on the table. She pulls out a sealed flask.

“Antiseptic,” she says, handing it over. “How long?”

“Three days,” Gandy replies. “I got. . .I may or may not have gotten in a bit of a hard spot and possibly tried to run a scam with less information than I maybe could’ve. . .I made a mistake, is what I’m saying, and it cost me. You know, life.”

Dancer hums. “You squeamish?”

“Very,” Gandy says. “I mean, I can get by in a pinch, but I don’t. . .like. . .death.”

“Well, we all have our faults,” she replies. “I was askin’ because if you’ve got anythin’ serious and you’ve left it alone for three whole days, we might have an issue.”

She blinks. “Wait, we?”

“Yes, we,” Dancer says. “One crook to another, woman to woman. I’d’ve killed to have someone who knew what the hell they were doin’ the last time I got knocked off my feet. Just bein’ a good samaritan.” She grins. “Also, you owin’ me a sizable favor doesn’t hurt.”

Gandy grimaces. She’s not as jumpy about debts as some people, but she does like her deals to be a little more clear-cut than ‘sizable’. “Would you mind clarifying the exact size of the favor?”

Dancer shrugs. “Next time I’m in a scrape and you’re present, you help me out. No questions asked, no strings attached.”

“What’s the definition of a scrape here, exactly?”

She shrugs again. “I suppose since one of your tricks got you into this mess, you owe me the next time one of my tricks gets me into a similarly tough spot. Help me hide the body an’ such.”

She considers it. “And in return?”

“I’ll let you stay here for as long as you need to get that arm workin’ again,” Dancer replies. “I’ll doctor you to the best a’ my ability an’ I won’t ask pryin’ questions. Also,” she adds, “I’ll make sure that caravan a’ yours stays firmly in your care. I’ll even make sure nobody else comes in askin’ after you, so don’t say I never do anythin’ nice for you.”

“That. . .sounds nice, actually,” Gandy says. “Thank you.”

“Great, now give me your arm,” Dancer says. “I can’t treat the wound if you keep tryin’ to glue it to your side.”

Gandy starts. “Oh!” she says, stretching her arm out. “I’m. . .sorry, I didn’t think of that.”

“You’ll learn,” Dancer says. “If you plan on gettin’ in more armed standoffs, anyhow.”

She blinks. “I’ve. . .only gotten in like six.”

Dancer laughs sharply. “Must be nice to be a wizard.”

-

Dancer can’t cook for shit, she realizes. It takes about three meals before it becomes clear that nearly everything that woman makes catches on fire at least a little bit before she serves it, and that’s not how Gandy takes her anything.

“I can help,” she says after the third time she bites into something that’s mostly ash. “I might be working with one arm at the moment, but I can season, at least.”

Dancer looks up from where she’s cutting potatoes. “What’re you plannin’ to season with, exactly?”

Gandy brightens. “No need to worry, I have spices in the Black Mariah.” She pauses. “I might need a little bit of help getting them, but. . .”

She shrugs. “Can’t see the harm in it.”

-

“Your arm’s almost healed up,” Dancer says, standing up. “I’d give it about two more days until you’re back in the ring.”

Gandy looks up. “Really? Good! How do you tell?”

She flicks Gandy’s shoulder. “That.”

Seeing her point, she sits up. “Why the two days, then?”

“It’s still scabbed,” Dancer explains. “You could rip it back open easily enough and that’d undo a significant amount of work.”

Gandy nods. “Alright. Well. Good.”

They look at each other for a bit.

“You got a coin to flip to see who’s makin’ dinner tonight?” Dancer asks.

“I’ll do it,” Gandy says. “It’s the least I can do.”

Dancer huffs. “You’d better do more than your least.”

She gives Dancer a look. “You think charcoal’s food, miss.”

“Brings out the flavor,” Dancer insists.

-

“Alright,” Dancer says a few days later. “Square up.”

Gandy looks up. “What?”

“Square up,” she repeats. “Time to see if you’re healed.”

She blinks, but drops into a fighting stance nonetheless. “So are-“

Dancer lunges for her, and Gandy ducks out of the way.

They’re about even, skill-wise, but Dancer has the upper hand by virtue of preparedness and it’s only a few seconds before she knocks Gandy over.

“Well,” she says, crouching down next to her. “The good news is that you’re healed. The bad news is that there’s nothin’ else you can blame that shameful display on.”

Gandy makes an offended noise. “You caught me off guard!”

“That’s usually how fights work,” Dancer says amusedly. “I was charitable enough to inform you we were fightin’ before I hit, even.”

She sighs. “I suppose so.”

Dancer shrugs. “Don’t worry too much,” she says. “You haven’t managed to get yourself killed yet,” she says, reaching out a hand.

Gandy takes it and lets herself be pulled up. “Thank you for the unwavering support.”

“Don’t mention it,” Dancer replies.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If there's one thing the Wild West is good for, it's a road trip. A path trip. An open empty wilderness trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i DO like the canon characters, but, you know, sometimes that just how things shake out, sometimes that's just how the cards fall, sometimes you can't think of any good ideas for the canon characters and instead you have a bunch of ideas for the one-off thing you did with only two canon characters and your oc, don't @ me,

Gandy crouches down to the floor, picking up a lantern with cracked glass panes. She looks over the wreckage of the town with something approaching sadness.

“Shit,” she says.

Calling it a town would be generous at this point, honestly. It’s a couple of burnt buildings surrounded by ashes that’ve started to bury themselves in the desert. Whatever did _this_ to a town she distinctly remembers being functional two weeks ago is gone, and honestly, she isn’t sure what the hell to do with that information.

Someone coughs behind her.

Whirling around and drawing her pistols, Gandy drops into a fighting stance facing her attacker(?) before they can finish cracking a patronizing grin.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Miss Dancer says.

Gandy squints, but stands up and holsters her weapons. “Just to check, was this. . .you?” she asks, jabbing a thumb at the mess behind her.

Dancer shakes her head. “Nope,” she says. “I was there, though.”

She doesn’t say anything beyond that, and Gandy recognizes enough of a blank stare in her eyes to tread carefully around her next question.

“Do you want to call in your favor?”

Dancer blinks. “What’re you offerin’, exactly?”

The sun’s hot as all hell, and Gandy blinks. “A ride, maybe? I could give you an artifact, or. . .I could help.”

“Hmm,” Dancer replies. “Nowhere to go, really, so a ride wouldn’t be much help. What’ve you got in the way of trinkets, wizard?” She laughs. “Seems like we’ve come full circle.”

“You mean because when we first met you were going to rob me?” Gandy asks, crossing her arms.

“No need to get so uppity about it,” Dancer says. “You were plannin’ the same.”

“I’m not getting uppity.” She pauses. “I was being hypocritical, not uppity. They’re different.”

Dancer raises an eyebrow.

She huffs. “Anyway,” Gandy says, “if you don’t have anywhere else to go, I could. . .maybe. . .I sleep on my workbench like your average heathen so I can’t exactly offer you a _bed_ , but I can do a roof over your head and food. You did kinda save my ass that one time, so I’m willing to put up with you as long as you put up with me.”

Dancer tilts her head. “Generous of ya,” she says, before tapping her foot and staring at the dust for a bit.

The overwhelming anxiety of maybe having overstepped someone’s boundaries hits Gandy about two seconds later, and she’s very nearly on the edge of literally teleporting into the Black Mariah and running before she has to continue this conversation when Dancer tilts her head back up and nods sharply.

Gandy blinks. “Oh. Okay,” she says. “Do you have any preferred destinations?”

“Do you?”

“Oh, no,” Gandy says. “Simple woman, remember? I usually just aimlessly wander until a town runs into me.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

-

The first week is rough, if she’s being honest. Uncle Oni is trying to win the ‘unwelcoming host’ pageant, Miss Dancer is a big fan of poking into Gandy’s artifacts, and Gandy herself is at least twenty percent less patient that she remembers being.

“Please don’t touch that,” Gandy says, trying to fit a glass pane back together in a moving wagon.

Dancer makes a noncommittal noise and stands up, moving to sit next to Gandy on her workbench. She mutters something under her breath in. . .it’s been a _really_ long time since she heard Mandarin, shit.

“What was that?” Gandy asks. She tries not to sound defensive, and she . . .sort of succeeds.

She does not succeed.

Dancer leans on the table to make eye contact. “I said _sorry_ , miss. Thought you were worldly enough to know when someone’s cussin’ you out and when they’re just apologizin’.”

“Sorry,” Gandy echoes. “That sounded more defensive than I meant it to.”

“No hardship here,” Dancer says. “I _am_ bored as all hell though. Wanna play poker? Fight? Antagonize your creepy puppet?”

She shakes her head. “Still doing this. And you’re giving me too much credit. He’s not _my_ puppet. Uncle Oni just lives here.”

Dancer shrugs.

“I wouldn’t mind playing a game of poker after this, though,” Gandy concedes.”

“Atta girl.”

-

The wide open night sky stretches over Gandy, Miss Dancer, and Uncle Oni as they play poker in the light of a single lantern.

“Can’t believe you’re _card counting_ ,” Miss Dancer says. “And here I thought you were a professional.”

Gandy sighs. “Yeah, whatever.”

“If you keep actin’ like this is your first poker game, I win by default.”

Shuffling her hand, Gandy sets it down. “Awful bold accusation, Miss Dancer. How about you beat me in a game of mahjong and then I’ll _think_ about taking you up on that bet.”

Dancer’s smile flickers in the moonlight, and both of them take a brief second to glare at each other.

“I win,” Uncle Oni says.

They both look down.

“Shit, he does,” Gandy says.

-

Dancer’s vision turns out to be a damn sight better than Gandy’s, and she spots the town while it’s still a dot on the horizon.

“Land ho!” she says, turning to face Gandy.

Gandy blinks. “That’s. . .that’s a smudge.”

“Ain’t either,” Dancer replies. “It’s a town. Big one, too.”

Landing on the ground next to the wagon, Gandy shields her eyes from the sun and stares.

“Fine,” she finally says. “I guess that kind of looks like a town.”

When Gandy looks back at Dancer, she’s staring at the town again, arms crossed.

“What?” Gandy asks.

She shrugs.

“Okay?”

-

It’s raining.

Holy _shit_ , it’s raining.

They were planning to head out immediately the next day, but _holy shit it’s raining_ , and Gandy’s been around the world and back again but there’s still something so magical about feeling water hit her face when she turns her face to the sky that she just kind of. . .stands there, still only half out of the wagon, shielding her eyes and listening to the rain hit the roof of her wagon.

Uncle Oni, being mostly wood and paint, has long since retreated into the Black Mariah, and Dancer is still curled up on a pile of cloth inside the wagon.

It’s peaceful, and Gandy steps back inside, closing the door behind her and trying to wring her hair out as she contends with the fact that it’s been long enough since she last had to worry about it that she’s not entirely sure what she can and can’t bring out into the rain.

She decides to worry about it later.

Uncle Oni sits on her worktable, glaring suspiciously at her, and Gandy shrugs.

“The wagon’s wood, too,” Uncle Oni reminds her.

She shrugs again. “It’s durable.” She pauses. “Also, I’m _pretty_ sure I treated it with a something or other to protect it against the elements. I did a thing to protect against magical attacks, so that seems like the kind of thing I would’ve-”

She jumps when she feels a hand on her shoulder, jerking her head around to face-

“Oh,” she says, looking at Dancer, who’s squinting at her. She rubs her eyes.

Dancer points to the roof. “Fuck’s this?” she says, not sounding totally awake.

“. . .Rain?”

She knits her eyebrows. “The hell?”

“It’s raining,” Gandy repeats. “Water? From the sky?”

“That doesn’t happen here,” Dancer says, shaking her head.

Gandy raises an eyebrow. They’re, like, a week away from Dancer’s. . .previous home. It wasn’t Brazil, but she didn’t realize it didn’t have _any_ rain. “It does _here_.” she looks at the messy world map she pinned up a few years ago. “Truth be told, I couldn’t tell you _exactly_ where we are, but we’re pretty near the Rockies. It might even snow here, if we waited until winter.”

Dancer finishes waking up while Gandy talks, and is staring at the floor, arms crossed, once she finishes.

“Fuck,” Dancer says quietly. “That’s new.”

“You’ve never been somewhere where it rains?” Gandy asks tentatively.

She shakes her head. “No, I’ve seen rain before. Been an awful long time, though. I’ve been in the desert for a while.”

Gandy nods. “Me too, really. I haven’t seen rain for. . .two years, I think.”

Dancer laughs. “Last time I even saw cloudy skies, I was _twelve._ ”

“Oh,” she says. Gandy shrugs. “I spent a while in Europe,” she explains.

“Exotic,” Dancer says. “Never been outside America, myself. Parents lived in Mexico until it turned into America on us, an’ this is just about the farthest I’ve ever been up from the border.”

Gandy doesn’t actually have anything to say to that, outside of an offhand “same”.

The rain’s still going strong, and Gandy sighs. “This might,” she says, “be. Kind of a problem.”

“Yeah?” Dancer asks.

“I won’t be driving us anywhere while it’s raining,” Uncle Oni says from behind them. “Really, I was wondering when you’d get to that.”

Gandy nods. “I’m. . .kind of out of practice, to tell you the truth,” she says sheepishly.

Dancer blinks. “Same here,” she admits. “‘Specially in the rain. I took a glance out there and, if I’m bein’ _honest_ , I’d be drivin’ us into the first ditch we came to.”

“I’m a little better than that,” Gandy says, “but I can’t see where we’re going, so. . .”

Uncle Oni nods, which makes sort of a clicking noise. “I see, I see. So we’ll be waiting the storm out?”

They all fall silent for a few seconds.

“I guess so,” Gandy says, looking to Dancer, who shrugs wordlessly.

Uncle Oni taps his chin. “Who’s up for cards?” he asks.


End file.
